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Mushroom Mania.

I have been wanting to pressure can some mushrooms for quite some time. I love adding mushrooms to so many recipes. I mean, what isn’t good with mushrooms? I try to keep some fresh mushrooms in the house, but when I go to use them they are either all gone or turning bad on me. Sometimes they turn very quickly. So, I wanted to can some fresh Ontario mushrooms and that is what I’ve done. One of our local grocery stores had beautiful fresh local mushrooms at a really good sale price, so I jumped in the car and after making the employee go to the back and get me the freshest ones there…I went home with a total of 12 pounds! <they actually cut me off at the two cases

Before I get to my lovely home canned mushrooms, I want to talk stems. I wanted my mushrooms to look nice in the jars so I removed all or most of the stems. When I finished washing and trimming my mushrooms I realized I had an easy two pounds of mushroom stems and pieces left over. ~waste not, want not’~ right?

After filling my canning jars I had not quite a pint left over of mushrooms. I had saved some of the lovely juices from the 10 minute boil in my canning recipe. I added to this in the stock pot all of these wonderful stems. I then added a good half cup or more of butter and a healthy cup of chopped onions. I cooked this all down and added fresh pepper and a bit of salt. As it got thicker and creamy all on it’s own, I added a quart of my home canned chicken broth and using my emersion blender made it all nice and smooth. I then added some half and half cream and some milk and let it continue to thicken with a low heat.

So, what do I do with about 4 quarts of creamy, dreamy fresh mushroom soup? I 1 two-thirds filled pint mason jars with the hot goodness and added spoons and took them to my employees, stopped production and got to see them enjoy this treat. I had remembered that we had real mushroom lovers out there. One of which is my aunt, who used to when she was a child have a family run mushroom farm is absolutely crazy about mushrooms.

So here are the pictures of my lovely ***canned mushrooms. They turned out absolutely perfect and I know I will enjoy always having them when I need them. Thanks for visiting my blog, hope you enjoyed what I have to offer. (click the pics for a close up view)

***I also have to say, that these were pressure canned and all safety guidelines were strictly adhered to. They were washed, dipped in water and lemon juice (to keep colour nice), rinsed, trimmed, rinsed, put into a deep clean stock pot covered with clean water, boiled for 10 minutes, drained (held back some of this water for soup), packed in clean jars, each jar then had clean boiling water added to 1 inch head space, air taken out, rims of jars cleaned with a clean cloth dampened with vinegar, lids placed and and in the canner with canner lid shut, vented for 10 minutes, then weighted, brought to pressure and timed for 45 minutes. *** HOME CANNING IS THE WAY TO GO, BUT PLEASE DO IT SAFELY.